getTokenSilently() failing with "ID token is required but missing" error

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1

Hello,

I am building an Angular service (AuthService) like you have in your Quick Start guide. I need to be able to exchange our Auth0 accessToken for a Firebase token whenever the accessToken is updated. To do this I’ve added a refresh timer in my AuthService to manually invoke getTokenSilently() to get the latest accessToken and then call a REST service to mint a new Firebase token.

The problem I’m having is if I set that refresh timer to run prior to the accessToken expiration, I just receive back the same accessToken (that is about to expire). If I set it to run at the same time or slightly after the accessToken expiration, I get an error ID token is required but missing. I have enabled refresh token rotation on the Auth0 application and enabled offline_access on the Auth0 API for the accessToken. The refresh_token grant type is also applied to the Auth0 application. I see the refresh_token stored in localStorage along with the id_token, access_token, etc. so I know I’m getting it. It seems like everything is configured correctly to enable refresh token use.

Perhaps I don’t really understand how the refresh_token is used within the bowels of auth0-spa-js. My assumption was that it would use the refresh token to go get a new access_token from Auth0 either whenever getTokenSilently() was invoked or by tracking the access_token expiration and automatically going to Auth0 to fetch an updated one (using the web worker). What triggers the use of the refresh token by auth0-spa-js and if getTokenSilently() will not force it, is there another method that can be called to force the silent refresh?

Any help, greatly appreciated. Thanks!

2

Follow up:
I was able to discover that the calls to /oauth/token with the refresh token are occurring but the response is missing the id_token and scope fields. I am getting a new access_token and refresh_token in the response. What could be causing that? I saw a post mentioning that the original token must have included the openid scope and it does. Any other common reasons that the scope and id_token would be missing in the response to /oauth/token during refresh?

1 Like
3

Not sure why this post was marked as the solution. I’m still wondering why the id_token isn’t being returned automatically as it is described in documentation. Looking at the code, I don’t see a way to force the call to oauth/token to contain the openid scope which would result in it properly sending back the id_token. Is this a bug somewhere either in Auth0 token service or the auth0-spa-js?

4

For others that run into this problem, here was my solution.

I had a rule that ensured that there weren’t any scopes requested that hadn’t been authorized. It was modeled after the example here.

When a request to refresh the access_token comes in from the auth0-spa-js library, it won’t have any scopes defined. Because my rule sent back an empty string for scope in that scenario, it was causing the id_token to be left off the response. Here is my final code for the rule that includes a workaround to add the proper scopes on when a refresh request comes in:

/**
 * Rule to check permissions to filter user scopes on access token
 *
 * @param {*} user
 * @param {*} context
 * @param {*} callback
 */
function checkScopes(user, context, callback) {
  const permissions = user.permissions || [];
  context.request.body = context.request.body || {};
  context.request.query = context.request.query || {};
  let requestedScopes = context.request.query.scope || context.request.body.scope || '';
  if (context.protocol === 'oauth2-refresh-token') {
    requestedScopes = requestedScopes || 'openid profile email offline_access';
  }
  const filteredScopes = requestedScopes.split(' ').filter( function(x) {
    return x.indexOf(':') < 0;
  });

  Array.prototype.push.apply(filteredScopes, permissions);
  context.accessToken.scope = filteredScopes.join(' ');

  callback(null, user, context);
}

Hope that helps others. Cheers!

1 Like
5

Glad you have figured it out and thanks for sharing with the rest of community!

6

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